Shuffling

It's a ridiculous length of time since I last posted, for which I apologise, but I really don't know what to say.  I'm sort of shuffling along, and I guess things are a little better than they were, but it's hard to see it day-to-day.

I'm not getting very much from the CPN, and have given up any expectations I had.  It's not that she isn't coming to visit, but more a difference in personalities, a clash of ideas of what might be helpful, and ... hmm ... how do I phrase this? ... I don't feel respected.  She obviously isn't a Christian, which shouldn't matter, and hasn't mattered in the past with other clinicians, and actually it shouldn't impact at all on the patient-CPN relationship, but it does because she dismisses my beliefs as unimportant at best, and as a sign of mental illness at worst.  I don't necessarily expect her to share my Christian beliefs, but I do expect her to respect them and not treat me as a nutter simply because I have a Christian faith.  I don't have extremist beliefs.  I'm not part of some strange cult or sect.  I am part of an Anglican Church community in the neighbouring parish to where I live, and within that community, some of my views are quite liberal.  All of it is far removed from anything that could be considered even remotely crazy.  So yes, it's tricky with her.  I feel as though I have to seem willing to try and at least give it a go, but I no longer have any expectations of helpfulness.

It's not just the thing about her response to my faith, there are other things too.  I suppose most significantly is that a lot of the time she makes me feel like I'm just a case study for her student.  I'm 'good experience' for her; I'm 'something interesting to look up' when they get back to the office; I'm a 'good example of a high functioning, intelligent depressive'; I'm 'a complex and interesting case' for the student to follow through, and 'Oh, wouldn't it be good if the student could see [me] get well, although she's only on this placement for another three week.'  No pressure then!

Thankfully I still have the psychologist who continues to be helpful.  The sessions are hard work, but I trust the psychologist and feel able to tell her anything, even if it's sometimes difficult to say the words.  The difficulty is in expressing myself or trusting myself with the words (which, I am aware, sounds odd), rather than difficulty with trusting the psychologist.

There's still a degree of crisis management being needed in the psychology sessions, and when it's not quite crisis management it's kind of one step removed from that - maybe day to day management rather than minute to minute.  Eventually I will be doing some specific work on the flashback aspect of the PTSD, but the psychologist wants me to be a lot more stable and feeling much more robust than I currently am because it's very demanding.  I know this from previous CBT I've had for totally different reasons, so in many ways I'm in no hurry to start this work, but on the other hand, 'life' with PTSD is crushing.

Between appointments with the psychologist and the CPN I do feel like I'm just shuffling.  I keep trying to write, but it keeps not happening - you have born witness to my lack of writing even on my blog - although I have managed to do some editing last week for an acquaintance's End of Module Assessment for their current Open University course.  My brain wasn't in the best place for doing it, because concentrating is still difficult, but it did make me feel useful and it was productive, so the hard work was worth it.  The other thing I have been doing is playing the violin a bit.  I used to play a lot.  At one time in the past it felt as though my violin was an extension of me, and although I'm not back to that stage, it does feel good to have that creative outlet again.  I started off with playing the piano again a few weeks ago, and I'm still doing a bit of that, but I get different things from the piano and violin, and it kind of feels like the bit of brain that does the violin playing is perhaps next to the bit of brain that does writing.  I'm hoping that the violin-playing bit might nudge awake the writing bit and get it working again.  I've mostly been playing one piece of music - Bach's Concerto for Violin and Oboe in D minor, although I've been playing the oboe part on the violin as this is the part my old violin teacher had me play.  It may only be three movements long, but I can spend a couple of hours playing, replaying, and taking this piece apart.  I play along to a CD recording so that I get the experience of playing the whole piece with an orchestra.  I'm not sure my neighbours appreciate it, but I try to ignore that and instead get absorbed in the music.  Even though I'm not able to do it every day, I think the fact that I can do it at all is progress, and maybe, just maybe it'll even help me progress further.

I'm sure there was something else I was going to say, but my mind seems to have turned to mush and suddenly I can't think where this post was going.  I guess it's part of the shuffle - it's a bit directionless, but with a general hope that it might be vaguely forwards.  Um, yes, so er, I've completely forgotten where this was going so I'll stop, but I'm hoping to get back well before the time between this post and the previous one.

Trauma

I'm afraid to say that I'm still not doing well on the emotional front.  Part of the reason I haven't posted for so long is because I've wanted to be more positive and more like my usual self when I've posted, but I've come to realise that if I do then then I'll be waiting a very long time, as will you.  The fact of the matter is that things are tough - very tough - the Crisis Team are still seeing me every two days, and I'm still phoning their support line most nights.

Most people wouldn't think of asthma as traumatic.  Most people think of it as a mild condition of childhood that's easily treated with a couple of puffs of an inhaler, and at some point the child will grow out of it.  This can be the case for some, perhaps for most, but for a minority asthma can be severe (and anyone with any 'level' of asthma can have a severe attack at any time).  For some, asthma can be life-threatening, and for an even smaller minority it can be repeatedly life-threatening.  I'm in that minority of the minority, but just because I've gone through a huge number of life-threatening/near-fatal asthma attacks, it doesn't mean that it gets easier.  Yes, I know what's happening, and I know what to expect in terms of treatment, but I never know if I'm going to survive.  The fear never goes away.

I'm good at keeping as calm as possible when I'm in the throes of a severe asthma attack - it's been commented on by medical staff more than once - but the fear and anxiety is merely under control, rather than absent.  It has to come out sometime.

For several years I have seemingly bounced back after each severe attack.  I've been tired, and it's taken a while to get my physical strength back, but I often haven't given enough attention to the emotional trauma.  Instead I've thrown myself back in to studies, concentrated on whatever essay or piece of creative writing I've had to do, and looked towards getting my degrees.  I have those degrees now.  I don't have essays to produce or books to study.  I don't have a guided focus.  I do have the two books I'm meant to be writing, but I can't concentrate on them.  I can't focus.  I can't get my words out sufficiently.  Even writing this is a real struggle.

To some extent, all these things have provided distraction when I've been discharged from hospital, but the counter-side is that they've also stopped me from dealing with the trauma of the events.  My last admission was particularly traumatic.  I felt traumatised at the time of the attack, and in the days immediately following it (after I'd been transferred from ITU to the respiratory ward), but then there was the severe pyelonephritis (kidney infection) on top of it all, and the combination has been overwhelming.  I have now been diagnosed as having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

My psychologist is good - helpful, attentive, works with me in partnership, works me hard, and I trust her.  None of that makes therapy easy - therapy is never easy - but it reduces any anxiety I have about talking about some aspects of the trauma.  However, at the moment we're having to fire fighting therapy - crisis management - so planning sessions from week to week isn't really working. Instead we have to deal with whatever is the most pressing and distressing thing at the time.  They're all connected, all part of the PTSD and depression, but some of the 'symptoms' are themselves distressing.

I was going to write some more, but I keep zoning out (dissociating) - one of the PTSD symptoms I've recently been finding very distressing (at least in the aftermath).  It's taken me two hours to write what I have!  Maybe I'll write some more about this at another time, but for now I'll have to leave it here.  Apologies if this doesn't all make sense.